The Blood Mirror by Brent Weeks
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Not impressed.
Started out as a trilogy, but…surprise! After book three, turns out there’s going to be a book 4. Surprise! After book 4, there’s going to be a book 5! Could be a good thing–more story is better right?
Right…
But not if there’s no story to tell.
Unfortunately, the only story here is the one about the author who thought it’d be a good idea to turn 3 books into 5 so he could make more money off a good thing.
So–disappointing. No exaggeration, 1/3 of the story was applicable to the story line. Remaining 2/3? Meaningless word-wondering. Story lines that don’t advance the plot.
Even worse, as the author tried to fill 600 pages with non-story stuff, it came out as sex and profanity. Doesn’t cross my lines, but it might cross yours, so read with awareness.
I have sky-high hopes that book 5 will put a pretty bow on this thing, because Lightbringer is a pretty great adventure as a whole. Who knows, maybe I’ll be surprised and find that there was more to book 4 than I thought.
Or maybe at the end of book 5 I’ll find out there’s going to be a book 6…
Still no release date for book 5 either.
Sigh.
Adults only.
Happy Reading.
One Man Book Club 
7 responses to “#TheBloodMirror (Lightbringer, #4): Not Impressed”
Oh that’s too bad. I was really starting think I need to read this series.
LikeLiked by 1 person
If the series sounds good to you, I’d encourage you to give it a try. I was annoyed at the 4th book, but it doesn’t change that the story as a whole remains pretty great. Of course, if book 5 stinks, I could change my tune.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Which is why I’ll probably hold off until you’ve read that one. I’ve got plenty of other books to read in the meantime.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Right on. Very wise.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I”ve seen you mention several time that this was meant to be a trilogy. Where did that come from? I’m not doubting you, I just can’t remember if Weeks ever publicly said it was going to be a trilogy.
LikeLiked by 1 person
From his website FAQ:
Q: How many books are going to be in The Lightbringer Series
A: “From the very beginning I thought it had enough conflict for four books, but I was going to try to wrestle it down to three. In some ways, I think you can see that wrestling–and losing!–taking place even in the length of the books. Where the Night Angel books were 150,000 to 170,000 words, Black Prism was 215,000 and The Blinding Knife is 235,000. I realized that if I were to try to finish this series in one more book, it was going to be over 400,000 words. Maybe well over that. So as I was laying out scenes for that last book, the question for me varied between “What can I cut?” and “Is there a good enough stopping point in the middle to have this be two satisfying books?” In working through it, there was too much good stuff that I didn’t want to cut, and I did find a satisfactory stopping place, so I pulled the trigger and said, “This will be four.” I’m lucky enough that Orbit was totally cool with that.
So he was trying for three, went for four, and as we know landed (hopefully) on five.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Straight from the horses mouth then! Sigh…
LikeLiked by 1 person